


unexpected

by Serie11



Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Exploration, Gen, Machines, Unusual Friendships, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-10-20 07:50:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20671847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serie11/pseuds/Serie11
Summary: Aloy finds a half-downed watcher, and her first impulse is to repair it.





	unexpected

Aloy stalks through the grass quietly, intent on keeping a low profile. She’s in an area with a lot of machines, and she doesn’t want to alert any of them. Fighting them would be _far _more trouble than it’s worth, especially since she can see a few glinthawks on the horizon as well, their jaws cutting apart a pile of scrap. They’re the most annoying of all the machines to fight, and she’s glad that she doesn’t run into them very often.

She reaches the end of one patch of grass, and carefully looks around, surveying the area until she’s sure that no machine is going to see her in her sneak to the next patch. It’s several seconds in the open out of cover, and the awareness that she’s in the open presses against the back of her neck uncomfortably.

She enters the next patch of grass and resists the urge to let out a sigh of relief. She has to be calm, quiet, and in control. That was always Rost’s favourite thing to say whenever she wasn’t performing to his expectations. It’s a delicate balancing act, and especially when she was younger, she had trouble keeping all three in balance.

She creeps through the grass, but half way through the patch she stops, furrowing her brows at what she finds. There’s a watcher lying in the middle of the grass, sparking and bursting quietly, still twitching. Its lens is cracked, which is why it hasn’t seen her yet. Aloy tilts her head at it and then grabs her spear and presses it against the vulnerable wires that are very easy to get to, since the casing of the watcher has been half ripped off already.

The watcher lets out a quiet whirring noise when the override is finished, recalibrating. Aloy starts digging around inside it, puzzled. If she finds downed watchers normally, the signs of other hunters are clear on it. But this watcher still has all of the valuable things that she would normally loot from a machine. Even the most inexperienced parts-stripper knows where to find the best bits and pieces of a watcher, and she can’t see any spear marks or arrow marks on the casing that’s remaining.

“Odd,” she mutters under her breath. “Who did this to you?”

The watcher is silent, accepting her ministrations. All the machines that she overrides are like this – the blue wires curl around them, and then they follow her commands. She’s still not used to it. She still has to remind herself sometimes, that the machines have all been made by people. Well, GAIA. But GAIA was created by people. That means that the machines were too, right? Or maybe they aren’t, since GAIA isn’t a person. Except Aloy has heard her talk, seen her face move with emotions, heard her dying plea. GAIA definitely _seems _like a person. And now she’s arguing against herself. Aloy sighs. It’s all a bit of a headache, really. When did her life get so complicated?

The watcher hums as she fits it with a new lens and ties it’s cracked casing back together with some wire, fitting shards into the vulnerable places that are left wide open. When she’s done, the watcher whirs, then starts pacing around her. Aloy sits back on her heels and watches it, thinking.

She marks the tracks of the watcher with her Focus, and starts following them. The watcher follows her, intent on their surroundings. Overriding it probably wasn’t the best decision – as soon as they come across another machine, it’s going to try and attack it. She puts the thought out of her mind. There’s nothing she can do about it now, besides turning around and downing the machine herself, but she always has trouble doing that after she overrides them. It feels… wrong.

The tracks lead her down to a small clearing, and she narrows her eyes at what she finds. There are two corrupted scrappers pacing around each other, lean and angry. She takes out her bow and loads three arrows into it. Probably overkill, but – the watcher bumps into her, and she adjusts her crouch so she’s more stable.

She pulls back her arrow and aims it at the closest scrapper. When it pauses, she looses her shot and quickly reloads. The scrapper that she targeted falls, and the other one startles, sending out a pulse of energy to locate her.

The watcher leaps out from the bush that they’re hiding in and Aloy mutters a curse under her breath. She sprints to the side so she’ll have an opening that she can use without hitting the watcher, and then aims. The two machines are tussling, so it’s a few moments before she can get off a clean shot. The scrapper falls, and the watcher examines it for a few moments before starting to patrol the area.

Aloy loots the two corrupted machines. It’s not often that she finds any these days – with HADES gone, there’s no new corruptors out there to infect the machines. This might be the last chance that she gets to grab corrupted parts. She’s still interested in studying what they do to the machines.

“I suppose I have you to thank for this,” Aloy tells her watcher. It continues to pace, heedless of her words. She tilts her head slightly, then stands. The watcher stills when she approaches it, and she peers at the new holes that the scrapper has rent into its side. “Lucky I patched you up,” she says. “Otherwise you probably wouldn’t have come out of that scrape.”

The watcher hums under her hands as she repairs it. It’s calming work, an easy way to end the fight. When she’s done, the watcher tilts its head at her, its lens bright blue.

“You should stay here,” she tells it. “Being around me is dangerous.”

It doesn’t give any sign of having understood her, and when she leaves, the watcher is at her heels. It’s unusual for the machines to do that, but sometimes they’ll follow her. Aloy tries to not pay it much attention, but the quiet rustle of a machine moving through the brush behind her is noticeable. Even though the watcher likely won’t be with her long, a part of her is still glad for the company. The long roads are lonely, and talking to herself isn’t exactly the same thing as talking to someone else. Even if that someone else is a machine.

The watcher purrs quietly, and Aloy can’t help but smile.


End file.
